February 24, 2013

Ashkenazi Haredim Completely Reject Compromise On Military Draft

Haredim refuse to serve. Haredi leaders make it clear to negotiators from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's philo-haredi Likud that they will not compromise at all on the issue of haredim being drafted into the military.

Or so the heads of the Ashkenazi haredi United Torah Judaism political party reportedly told the negotiating team from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party late Thursday night.

MKs Moshe Gafni, Yaakov Litzman and Meir Porush told the Likud team that UTJ insists it will not agree to any compromise that results in haredim being drafted into Israel’s military.

To make their point, the Jerusalem Post reports that Litzman took NIS 200 bill out of his pocket and read the quote printed in it from Israel’s third president Zalman Shazar.

“... [R]ich and poor, childless and those with many children, single and not single, everyone together needs to bear the yoke of Torah study,” the quote reads in part.

Litzman said this quote was his plan for equally sharing the national defense burden – meaning that non-haredi should study Torah rather than haredim serve in the military.

Litzman and his colleagues insist that every haredi male who wants to study Torah full time should be able to do so. They should be exempt from any military draft and their study should be subsidized by the state, UTJ insists.

Likud’s plan for the haredi draft, which was written by the chairman of the National Economic Council in the Prime Minister’s Office, Professor Eugene Kandel, sets an annual target of 60 to 65 percent enlistment of haredi men between the ages of 18 and 24 beginning five years from now.

Likud’s plan also contains financial incentives and financial sanctions meant to increase haredi military service – but the incentives are far stronger than the sanctions.

Likud’s is considerably more generous to haredim thn rival political parties like Yesh Atid, and its plan does not seem to be in compliance with the High Court of Justice ruling a year ago that made haredi draft exemptions to be illegal.

Friday’s edition of UTJ’s Yated Ne’eman daily newspaper published a proclamation from the Council of Torah Sages of the (hasidic) Agudat Yisrael faction of UTJ. It denounced any change that would “injure the holy yeshivas and remove Torah from its students…to obligate them to a yoke other than that of the Torah,” i.e, to obligate them to serve in the military. The proclamation ordered yeshiva students not to enlist in any form of military service.

“Even if they want to take you to jail, and if they want to remove your rights and decree upon you poverty and need, do not fear and God will be with you to sanctify his name with love,” the rabbis’ proclamation concluded.

Also last week, Rabbis Aharon Leib Shteinman and Shmuel Auerbach, the leaders of the two non-hasidic haredi factions in UTJ, both declared that no compromise on the issue would be allowed. Only full time Torah study for all who seek it and a complete ban on military service would be acceptable.

Significantly, Shteinman, the more moderate of the two leaders, issued his proclamation first, leaving no doubt that it was made of his own accord rather than as a response to his more conservative rival.

“Even if they want to take you to jail, and if they want to remove your rights and decree upon you poverty and need, do not fear and God will be with you to sanctify his name with love,” the rabbis’ proclamation concluded.

Good. Stop the subsidies, jail as many as their prisons have room for and take away their kids so they won't starve.

Let this be the beginning of the end of their psychopathic, parasitic way of life. Speedily and in our days.

Moron. The Zionists you so despise gave you the country you now revile,

1. The Zionists took the country without HaShem.
2. I don't live in Medinat Yisrael.
3. There has always been Yiddishkeit in Eretz Yisrael, even before the Zionists starting shooting and creating borders.

the country that supports your parasitic way of life.
1. I don't live in Medinat Yisrael.
2. We Anti-Zionists don't eat from the its hand.

Yet another example of the superior reasoning skills resulting from a yeshiva education.

What is your educational background?

Take your "light of Torah" and stick it up your ass, you frum piece of drek.

I knew you Zionists had not much with Torah but this is taking it a bit further. Amazing.

Interesting point. I don't remember there being an uproar during the Vietnam War as to why yeshivah students were getting deferments.

That's because it wasn't an entire subculture doing it, and at some point they got up off their asses and went to work.

Posted by: Jeff | February 24, 2013 at 09:21 AM

A compromise would appear to be to give deferments to people who learn half a day and work the other half. This way they get the deferment that they seek and the state gets people who know how to work and will see that it is not too bad.

This may make more sense than having them serve their time learning the art of killing and then have them return to the life of learning and getting handouts. At the same time having them be a more formidable foe compared to their stone age skills of throwing rocks and dirty diapers with an occasional spit.

YTHM-You ultra frummies just want others to sustain you so you can ruin the whole country.you are lower then an animal, an animal at least earns his food,youre bilndness to reality is pure evil, jeff is a billion per cent right you are defending a parasitic way of life, unconcionable.

How sad, here in the US when we had the draft we had a deferment for those who learned in yeshiva called "4D", yet here Israel, the Jewish homeland, we are debating to draft yeshiva students.

Posted by: YS |

america recognized that the various religions needed future ministers/rabbis and permitted those studying for these presumed leadership positions to be deferred.

1. if the numbers of 4D's rose to where 20-30% of the populations 18 year-olds were making use of it, restrictions and limitations would have been added.

2. based on israels size and needs, exempting 1000 charedim training to be actual MINISTERS of religion, i.e. rabbis with congregational roles, mohels etc. would be more than enough. the USA had no thought of 50,000+ jews studying , most of whom would never lead a single person in a ministerial capacity. the overwhelming majority of the parasitical charedi buchrim will never do anything beyond sitting with old books.

3. if israel felt the need to exempt the number of students necessary to fill society-benefiting rabbinical roles, it might also designate other fields where such exemptions could be made. a few thousand medical students, engineers, scientists, etc. could also be exempted.
but IT DOESNT. israel is confident that even without such exemptions, there will be sufficient coverage in all those areas. torah study is no different. so unless israel decides to enact deferments for every profession, rabbinics should be no different and shouldnt get ANY DEFERMENTS. but to claim ANYONE in a yeshiva should be automatically exempt is ridiculous.

A compromise would appear to be to give deferments to people who learn half a day and work the other half. This way they get the deferment that they seek and the state gets people who know how to work and will see that it is not too bad.

This may make more sense than having them serve their time learning the art of killing and then have them return to the life of learning and getting handouts. At the same time having them be a more formidable foe compared to their stone age skills of throwing rocks and dirty diapers with an occasional spit.

I wouldn't be opposed to that. Community service would be another option. As others keep saying, it's questionable as to how effective they'd be in the armed forces, anyway.

The galling thing is that they truly believe it is their God-given right to sit around all day schmoozing with their friends while pretending to learn, and that this somehow magically protects Israel, a state they refuse to recognize but from which they have no problem accepting protection and monetary support.

a required military conscription is just like paying taxes. the difference is that the army draft is a tax on ones time while taxes are a levy on ones income. in both cases fairness requires that all share the burden.
imagine if a group of doctors or an association of business owners declared that they should all be exempt from taxes. they could claim that because their work is so important to the countrys well-being, they refuse to pay any taxes. the tax burden should fall only on those who are not fulfilling their all important needs.
if anything, that argument is more reasonable than the one the charedim make since it can be empirically verified that without doctors the countrys overall measure of health and life expectancy would decline. there has yet to be a single study which shows that more or less kollel learning leads to anything at all.
we're supposed to just take their word for it that they are keeping israel in existence.
the only evidence we have on this front shows the opposite. israel came to be in 1948, and was soon involved in its first war-one for its very life- and won decisisvely. how many full time yeshiva boys were there at the time? 100 ? 200 ?
and when ben gurion signed the exemption into law there were 400 to whom it applied. and yet israel had more resounding success in '67 and '73 .
we can debate as to whether the recent wars in lebanon and gaza were clear victories or not, but they certainly werent as decisive as the other wars. and iran will obtain nuclear bombs shortly. this despite there now being over 50,000 full time learners who are supposed to ensure israels military success and who are part and parcel of its defense needs.
the graph would show that the more yeashiva learners there are, the less safe israel becomes.
so i call bullfeces.

if anything, that argument is more reasonable than the one the charedim make since it can be empirically verified that without doctors the countrys overall measure of health and life expectancy would decline.

You're comparing being a doctor with the study of the holy Toyreh? You kofer! Our holy sages tell us (so it must be true) that Toyreh alone preserves health and grants longevity. The doctors only take the credit!

The real problem is not the deferment it is the life of learning while the government supports them.

Hopefully one day there will be peace and the draft will be in the past, like it is here in the US. Face it, haredim are better off doing community service, they make poor killing machines unless you draft their rebbes who they follow blindly. Forward thinking people would be well advised to focus on getting them into the workforce and a visionary will use the draft deferment an a tool to get them there. As stated, let deferment be coupled with gainful employment.

Government has few tools to get what they want. You of course have prison to contain bad practices and you have tax codes to encourage good practices like giving to charity.

So in Israel to encourage working you can threaten to cut off funds or you can encourage working by awarding draft deferment. As long as they do some sort of gainful employment the are exempt, slack off and its off to boot camp.